Case Study
Red wine met a laptop. The data survived.
A Compaq CQ58 laptop, a spilled glass of red wine, and a student's photos and exam work on the line. Same-day imaging, 100% recovery.
The case
A laptop, a spilled glass of wine, and an exam deadline.
The client needed two things back off a Compaq CQ58 laptop: his photos, and the Word files behind his exam work.
Red wine had gone over the laptop, and the machine was brought in for data recovery rather than repair — the client's priority was the files, not the laptop itself.
Inside was a Hitachi (HGST) hard drive. Despite the spill, it was in a stable enough state that we could begin imaging it straight away, without any cleanroom intervention needed.
The recovery
From damaged drive to a full image in two hours.
- 01
Assessment
The liquid-damaged HGST drive was examined. It was stable enough to image directly, so the recovery could start the same day.
- 02
Full sector image
A complete image was captured in around two hours, with the original folder structure intact — photos, documents and exam files all present.
- 03
Confirming priorities
With exams pending, we waited on the client to confirm exactly which photos and Word files he needed released first, so those could move immediately rather than waiting on a full transfer.
- 04
Transfer to a new machine
The client chose to replace the laptop rather than repair it, and had the replacement shipped to our lab. As soon as it arrived, we transferred his pictures, photos, Word and PDF files across from the recovered image.
The result
100% recovery, exam files back inside two hours.
Every file came back — a full, 100% data recovery from the wine-damaged drive. The most time-critical items, his exam Microsoft Office files, were returned to the client in under two hours via our cloud transfer service, so his coursework wasn't held up while the rest of his files were moved across to the new laptop.
The hard drive recovery and file transfer service together came to around £120.
Our lab sits roughly a kilometre from Queen's University Belfast, and cases like this — students needing coursework or photos off a damaged drive — are ones we see often, with student pricing available on request. See our hard drive recovery service for how the full process works.
Power it down, don't try to dry it out or switch it back on, and get an honest assessment of what's recoverable — usually more than you'd expect.